


Half A Second (Maybe Less)

by Rainne



Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kate Lives, Multi, OT3, post-Twilight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 19:26:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainne/pseuds/Rainne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I promise.  I’m okay."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half A Second (Maybe Less)

**Author's Note:**

> AU tag to “Twilight” without the messy death stuff. For the [NCIS Thing-A-Thon](http://community.livejournal.com/ncis_shared/11008.html)

Half a second, maybe less. That was what stood between Kate Todd and instant death by cranial ventilation. If she’d bent over to brush the dirt off her white pants half a second later, that bullet would have gone through her skull instead of whining harmlessly above her bent back, between Tony and Gibbs’s faces faster than a hummingbird. Half a second, maybe less.

Half a second that would have seen Tony spattered with her blood, Gibbs unable to escape the sight of her crumpling to the ground. Half a second that would have seen Ducky unzipping a body bag with her inside instead of checking her bruised ribs and hugging her tightly. Half a second that would have had McGee choking on grief instead of wringing her hands in gratitude for her safety. Half a second that would have had Abby out of her mind in the lab instead of flinging her arms around Kate and hanging on as if she never intended to let go. Half a second, maybe less.

They wouldn’t let her out of their sight after that. Abby eventually went back to her lab, Ducky back to Autopsy. After Haswari was dead, McGee eventually went home. During that whole time – a six-day span during which they got a lot of illicit help from Fornell and a lot of obstruction from the new director – Kate was constantly accompanied by either Gibbs or Tony, everywhere she went. Including the bathroom, although after she pitched a screaming tantrum, they did agree to at least wait outside the door.

During those six days, they were one-hundred-percent focused on catching Haswari and making him pay for what he would have done if she’d been half a second (or less) later bending over. They were all under protective custody now, not just Gibbs, especially after Haswari took a second potshot into Abby’s lab, missing her by several feet but scaring them all badly anyway. Agents from another team went to their homes and collected clothing for them all, since it wasn’t safe for them to go home, and Balboa took Kate’s dog home with him to play with his kids.

After Haswari was dead and they were safe again, McGee and Abby and Ducky all went home, but Gibbs and Tony and Kate couldn’t seem to go. Kate had gotten so used to their company that she wasn’t sure she was quite ready to be without it; Gibbs and Tony had gotten so used to keeping their eyes on Kate that they couldn’t seem to stop. They sat in the darkened bullpen, looking at one another across the space between them, no one speaking. They simply breathed in each other’s presence, basking in the knowledge that they were all alive, that half a second (maybe less) had somehow been just enough.

Finally, Tony broke the silence. “You guys wanna go get a beer or something?”

“Make it a cosmo and you’ve got a deal,” Kate replied immediately.

“You know what I drink, DiNozzo; make sure it’s someplace with good quality bourbon.”

The three of them left together, and by unspoken agreement took a cab rather than driving; there was no question that by the end of the night, they wanted to be blind and stupid and unable to think about what might have happened if Kate had waited to finish her sentence before bending over.

_I thought I’d die before I ever got a compliment from you two_.

She almost had.

They started the night in the back corner booth of a little hole-in-the-wall pub that Tony knew, drinking beer and cosmopolitans and bourbon and not talking; by the time last call came around, they were shooting tequila and still grimly not talking. The words that needed to be said could not be said in this place, and if they started talking, they would not be able to stop. So they didn’t; instead, they squeezed together into the semicircular booth, Kate in the middle, and sat so close that they were all in each other’s personal space, so close that every time one of them shifted, the other two felt the echoes of it.

When the bar closed, they climbed together into a waiting taxi and gave the driver Kate’s address, because she lived the closest to where they were. She was still in the middle, between them on the back seat, and her vision was blurry enough that she finally couldn’t see herself lying on an autopsy table, and when Tony’s hand rested on her left thigh, she felt the warmth of his touch and looked up into his haunted eyes and took his hand, weaving her fingers through his. And then she reached over and took Gibbs’s hand as well, not wanting him to feel left out.

The cab pulled up in front of her apartment building, and Gibbs had to get out to let Kate out, but Tony wouldn’t let go of her hand, so they were all suddenly standing on the sidewalk and looking at one another and Kate found herself saying “If you want to come upstairs, I’ll make some coffee,” without really thinking about it beforehand. There was a long moment of silence in which they all knew that there was not going to be any coffee, and each of them knew that both of the others knew that as well, and then Tony was tossing a couple of twenties at the cabbie and telling him to keep the change.

The air was electric between them as they rode up in the elevator, still silent, Gibbs’s hand on Kate’s lower back and Tony’s under her hair, against the back of her neck. She wanted to melt into them right there, but she kept it together, because there was something that had to be said before she could allow herself to become incoherent. She unlocked the door, let them in. The apartment was strangely silent without Little Tony’s frantic greetings, but she was momentarily glad the dog was at Balboa’s, because she would have been a distraction that they did not need right then.

Gibbs locked the door behind them and leaned up against it, watching with eyes gone dark as Tony’s hands ran down Kate’s back and she leaned into him, her eyes fluttering closed under his gentle touch. Then she opened them again, stepping away from Tony to move toward Gibbs and taking those work-roughened hands in her own. “I’m okay,” she said softly, finally saying the words that had needed saying for six days but that had somehow not had an outlet before this very moment. “I promise. I’m okay.”

His hands clenched convulsively on hers, and suddenly she was in his arms, pulled tightly against him and smelling the distinctive mix of sawdust, Irish Spring soap, and _man_ that was so distinctly Gibbs. She wrapped her arms around his neck and ran her fingers through his hair, feeling his body shudder under the weight of tears he could or would not shed. “I’m okay,” she whispered again, willing him to believe it, willing herself to believe it. “I’m alive. I didn’t die.”

“Too close,” he whispered back, his voice thick. “Too god damn close.”

She turned slightly, looking over her shoulder at Tony, who had already kicked his shoes off, and she reached out one hand to him. He wrapped one arm around her and one around Gibbs, resting his head on her shoulder. “God, Kate…” he whispered brokenly, unable to find any other words. “If we… if you… oh, God.”

“Shh,” she said softly, and turned her face slightly, rubbing her cheek against his temple. “I didn’t. I’m still here. I am.”

Gibbs’s palm on her other cheek got her attention and she turned again, his eyes capturing hers and refusing to let her go as he leaned down, his breath soft and alcoholic as it washed across her face just before he pressed his lips to hers for the first time. She moaned softly and opened her mouth in an invitation that he took immediately, his tongue snaking into her mouth, tasting of bourbon and tequila and sin and desperation. From somewhere far away, she felt Tony’s lips press against her neck, his teeth grazing the sensitive flesh over her pulse point before he settled in where her neck met her shoulder and sucked gently.

It was Gibbs’s hands that pulled off her sweater; it was Tony’s nimble fingers that unhooked her bra, but it was her own hands that unfastened her jeans and pushed them down off her hips along with her underwear, and suddenly she was naked between two fully-clothed men that she worked with, her head falling back on Tony’s shoulder as Gibbs’s mouth made its way down to her breasts and Tony’s fingers mapped her belly and slid into the thatch of curls beneath.

She was wet and ready for them already, and Tony moaned softly at the feel of her silken flesh under his fingers. He slipped one finger inside her and she mewled softly; Gibbs added one of his own and her mewl became a cry. The two men locked eyes over her head and Gibbs jerked his head toward her bedroom door. “This’ll work better in there.”

“Thinkin’ you’re right, Boss,” Tony replied with a slight grin, and they released her, getting a soft sound of protest before Tony sent her toward the bedroom with a gentle push of her shoulders. She stumbled ahead of them, crawling onto the bed and turning to lie on her back and watch them enter. Either of them alone would have been fine, but both of them together, standing by her dresser and shrugging out of their shirts, was too much for this small and delicately-furnished place. There was too much male in the room; they were in her space and breathing her air and making her room smell like sawdust and cologne and sex, and making her head spin.

Tony joined her on the bed first, slipping up on her right side and turning her slightly so that he was once again pressed against her back, his body warming hers and his cock hard and straining against her ass. Moments later, Gibbs was pressing against her front, his hands finding her breasts again and his cock pushing against her belly. She raised her leg, wrapping it around his hip and lowering her face to his, seeking his lips with her own. He groaned softly and shifted, pressing up inside her and shifting again so that she was straddling him, sitting firmly on his hips with his shaft deep inside her body.

He was stretching her, filling her deliciously and scratching an itch that she hadn’t even consciously realized she’d had for two years. She moaned his name, leaning forward to kiss him again, then sitting back heavily so that he drove even deeper inside her. It wasn’t going to take much, and they both knew it, so when she started to move, Gibbs’s hands guided her hips and Tony’s fingers found her clit and rubbed. Within seconds, she was crying out to the ceiling and Gibbs was biting the inside of his cheek and mentally reciting the roster of the 1971 Dallas Cowboys.

She slumped forward bonelessly and Gibbs caught her, his arms going around her to hold her gently against his chest as Tony rose to his knees, straddling Gibbs’s knees and running one hand down Kate’s back and over her ass. He leaned forward to whisper a question into her ear and she nodded against Gibbs’s chest, one hand gesturing languidly toward the bedside table.

Tony leaned and reached, opened the drawer and pulled out a bottle of lube and a condom. He rolled the condom on, then slicked his cock with his right hand and pushed one finger into her ass. She moaned, thick and low in her throat, and pushed back against him. With a chuckle, he added a second, thrusting gently with his hand, spreading the slick wetness on her flesh both inside and out, then he pulled his fingers out of her and pushed the head of his cock where they had been.

She gave a strangled gasp when he pushed inside her and he held very still, letting her body adjust to the intrusion before pushing forward, slowly but steadily, until he was buried in her to the hilt. By the time he got there, her breathing was shallow and harsh and desperate, and her hips were moving again, working them both with jerky movements that spoke of a loss of control and a surrender to the physical ecstasy of having them both inside her at once. Her hands were clenching and unclenching in the coverlet and Gibbs slipped his hands under hers, anchoring her in place, his eyes locked on her face, drinking in every detail of the agony of pleasure that was etched on her face.

Tony grabbed her hips to steady her, pulled back slowly, and then plunged forward again, loving the sounds she made and wondering if he could make her scream. “God,” he muttered. “So tight. So good. God, Kate.”

She cried out, thrusting back again, and Gibbs groaned. “Oh, God. Yeah, Kate, just like that, baby, just like that.”

Tony kept thrusting, slow and steady and deep, his hands kneading Kate’s flesh, his eyes drinking in the sight of the two bodies underneath him. He started moving faster once he was sure it wasn’t going to hurt her, and she began to cry out with each breath, her voice high pitched and breathless, and both she and Tony felt the warm rush that accompanied Gibbs’s voice when he shouted his orgasm.

“That’s right,” Tony laughed, thrusting even faster now. “You gonna come for me, too, Katie? You gonna scream for me?”

“Tony, oh God, Tony,” she choked out, her voice breaking. “So close. Uh… so c-close… please, Tony, please make me come, please make me come!”

Gibbs pulled one hand free from hers and slid it down between their bodies, pushing her up a little bit with the other. Tony got the message and slid his hands upward, pulling her up toward him so that Gibbs could reach between them and rub and pinch her clit.

Her body arched as if she’d gotten an electric shock and she screamed wordlessly as her inner muscles tensed and spasmed. Gibbs groaned again, thrusting up into her out of reflex, and Tony laughed again, pushing her back down again and pounding hard now. Two strokes, then three, then four, and he was coming as well, filling her with himself.

They collapsed into a sweaty tangle of arms and legs, both men’s hands stroking Kate’s heated skin as she shuddered through the aftershocks with soft whimpers. Gibbs pressed a kiss to her forehead and Tony tasted the sweat between her shoulder blades before rolling away long enough to deal with the condom, then rolling back again to tuck himself up against her.

They lay together for several minutes, not speaking, simply touching and kissing softly, before Gibbs enticed them out of bed and into a quick warm shower. They returned to the bed after that, sliding together under the covers and tangling together again, with Kate in the middle where they could both continue to touch her softly until they were sure from mind to heart to hands that she was alive, that luck had been with them that afternoon six days ago, and that half a second, maybe less, had been just enough.

And finally, they slept.

\--end--


End file.
